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Homeschoolers: Recapturing the Culture

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 1 month ago

 

Homeschoolers: Recapturing the Culture One Million

Converts at a Time

by Dr. Richard A. Jones

 

Because of a recent column, “It’s Your Serve,” a reader questioned how the task of achieving societal reformation and transformation could happen by the voluntary-based, “bottom-up” plan that I proposed:

 

“Dr. Jones, I was surprised by this section of your article: The old saying, ‘he convinced against his will is of the same opinion still,’ suggests that when a true and lasting Christian cultural rejuvenation arrives, it will, humanly speaking, have to have occurred strictly through voluntary attitudes of compliance and agreement, not by force. That’s why our replacement cadres of young leaders will be advancing the Cultural Mandate with a ‘bottom-up’ strategy of love, service, friendly persuasion and inspiring leadership in all public spheres. Not by a top-down approach using theocratic or government edicts.”

 

“To me,” she said, “your theory looks like abandonment of the sphere of government and would restrict Christian influence to just one-on-one personal interactions in culture. Since American Vision and Gary DeMar have told us about the Christian foundations of all 50 state governments, I would expect that you would have endorsed bottom-up and top-down strategies together to advance the Cultural Mandate. I am also curious how your ‘inspiring leadership from the bottom-up’ will work.” 

 

Every square inch of the planet is the Lord’s, and His people are expected to take dominion over all of it through inspiring leadership in every sector of society. (Gen. 1:26–28, Ps 8:5–6, the Great Commission, et al.) Target sectors include the spheres of business, media, education, the arts, literature, the courts, family, church, medicine, agriculture, law, engineering, music, banking, entertainment, investment and, of course, government. In God’s eyes all spheres are important and He providentially pre-positions each of us in our ultimate vocational sphere for the purpose of earning a living, career advancement and leadership as we become “full time” Christian missionaries to those around us in the sphere. The sphere of government, however, requires somewhat more attention than the others for two technical reasons.

 

First, because government has already made huge, inappropriate intrusions in all of the separate spheres and must be scaled back with our help.

 

Second, if civil government continues unchecked in its current march toward greater and greater control, we’ll soon lose all of our freedoms. And freedom is a condition which, after Christ, is the chief reason the U.S.A. was the best country ever. All of us today and especially the next generation must work as we can and as soon as possible to bring an end to the tragedy of too much politics and too much over-governing.

 

In all spheres, however, a key to American Vision’s central focus is that this needed Christian influence will occur through the skills, talent, and dedication of homeschooled adults. As youngsters, once their parents free them from victimization by humanist indoctrination in the public schools and from enfeebledness by the silliness of church “youth groups,” etc., they’ll be free to experience serious biblical worldview training. This is how they’ll gain the vocational, spiritual, academic, evangelistic and apologetic grooming needed to help bring culture back to a redeemed condition. As adults they’ll do it by acting as an army of “Christian Soldier Repairmen” and as difference-making, inspiring beacons of light for millions of those around them.             

                                               

Our new, 21st century Christian Soldiers will be wise enough to see that all activities in every sphere must be guided by five grim realities: The fact—no longer just the potential threat—that militant homosexuals and pornographers are aggressively assaulting every corner of society using phony slogans of “tolerance” and “civil rights.” The true goal of these agenda zealots is to criminalize and then eliminate the public worship of God, Christianity itself, and, most critically, the Bible’s annoying moral standards. “Get rid of the judge and there can be no judgment against whatever twisted life style I choose,” is the bottom line. Privately, 95% of homosexuals will admit they need spiritual help and as Christians we’re glad to help, but, the downright satanic aspect of the homosexual agenda has to be faced on all fronts and defeated.

 

Third, the growing threat by militant Islamic terrorists here at home (as well as abroad) must be countered with the message of Christ. But, launching immediate protective and preventive measures against Islamic terrorism’s physical threats is not an option, and there is the additional duty of working to oppose Washington’s frustrating theories of political correctness and “tolerance and multiculturalism is what made America great” propagandizing.

 

Fourth, we must learn to skillfully defy the ACLU’s clever but false “separation of church and state” mantra of indoctrination. It’s a deliberate lie based on a myth and must be removed from the national vocabulary before more damage is done.

 

Fifth, the same is true for the debilitating lie of evolution.

 

Last, there is the need to get serious about reversing the freedom-threatening lust to power exhibited by city, county, state and federal bureaucrats, politicians and regulators everywhere? (The total amount spent by govt. per person 100 years ago was $7. Today it’s $9,300.) These are some of the critical and additional “facts of life” homeschoolers will be learning from the earliest ages.  

 

Only change from the bottom-up will work to reduce and appropriately weaken a government that has become this powerful and this corrupt. It’s impossible to expect that a culture that’s been in meltdown mode for over a century can be rescued by some kind of miraculous, overnight, 51% to 49%, “top-down,” legislative acts that might hopefully force the country move “our way.” It won’t work. Our national mindset of “government as eternal safety-net” is too dead set against it. Besides, even though almost all legislation deals with matters of right and wrong, the kind of restored morality we’d like to see simply can’t be legislated. Laws alone can’t force people to “be good;” only Christ and adherence to His moral standards can do that. However, during the mid-1970s, starting with Jimmy Carter, stubborn U.S. Christians came up with the naïve pipedream that “reliance on politics” would make everything all nice again. But Carter betrayed our principles and Ronald Reagan, who seemed to be “Christian enough” and a better man, was obviously no magician. Even so, our mistaken euphoria with Reagan lead to a spirit of overconfidence and took us into full retreat away from deeper personal involvement.   

 

Some of this new breed of salt-and-light homeschoolers for Christ will eventually become elected officials in offices where “top-downism” is, by definition, the way things tend to work. That’s because laws are ultimately always enforceable by police power. Fortunately, however, the bottom-up principle still retains a powerful place in the halls of government because the lives of young Christians seeking to become lawmakers are always under the critical magnifying glass and microscope of public opinion. So, whether in pre-candidate mode as a next door neighbor or ultimately as a respected regional representative, exemplary behavior will serve as a life-style model as to what truly good governors and governments (minimal, freedom oriented and Bible-based) are supposed to be about. This “bottom-up-ness” will be especially vivid as Christian officials make their Bible-based moral compass and biblical worldview principles explicit through the quality of their legislation and their public speeches and writings. They’ll also be making a difference by direct impact on the personal lives of their fellow office holders, and the same as it relates to ever-skeptical cynics in the humanist media. Only when society reverts from today’s non-Christian status to Christian-based civic virtues will candidates at all levels be the kind of Bible-committed statesmen the nation once had and still needs. Any significant societal shift back to Christian values must be voluntary and needs to come from the heart with pulpits and everyday Christians leading the way; not by mere church-going politicians. All of these things homeschoolers will be learning and keeping in their hearts from ages three and four on up.

 

A huge majority of this new homeschooled generation will be moving into the dozens of other key societal spheres just mentioned where the skills, interests, and gifts God bestows upon them will be best utilized, and from a bottom-up offensive approach. This huge army of fully engaged adults will, daily, be influencing their fellow workers through winsome friendship evangelism as well as by bringing character, integrity, good example and product-advancing, employer-pleasing breakthroughs to their jobs. (I’m not neglecting the girls here. A Proverbs 31 article awaits.) Another key to the future is that they’ll also be bestowing the benefits of biblical worldview training upon their own children as they begin homeschooling them so that this new generation will, themselves, become the kind of parents God envisions and that our country needs.

 

Tens of thousands of Christians Soldiers in hundreds of spheres and will soon mean millions impacted. Sure, the bottom-up philosophy is a tall order, but, by thinking in terms of one voter, one new office holder, one new group of friends at work, one new child being taught at home by God’s people, it won’t be long before millions will have observed and become convinced, voluntarily, that the way of the Lord is the better way.

 


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